Camp Courant To Open, Remains Oldest Free Summer Camp In The Country

Camp Courant has been a household name in the Hartford area for years. But when retired Hartford Fire Chief Charles Teale was in elementary school, he was one of the few kids in his neighborhood who had never heard of it.

"I remember a neighbor woman asking if I was going to Camp Courant and I said 'Camp Courant? What's that?'" Teale said. "She marched upstairs to where my mother was four floors up and asked her permission and came down to me and said, 'Come on, you're going to Camp Courant'."

The camp in Farmington, which opens Monday for the summer, continues its run as the oldest free summer camp in the country.

Founded 120 years ago in 1894 by Hartford Courant employees who wanted to give back to the community, Camp Courant has maintained a strong tradition of serving Hartford's youth through development initiatives, leadership training, and social and outdoor activities.

Teale's experiences at Camp Courant in 1962 and 1963 opened new understandings and horizons. Growing up with hardships like hunger and parental sickness, Teale thought that society did not care about him, he said. His time at Camp Courant, however, changed the way he thought.

"It made me appreciate society, and I think it is important that people understand the correlation between successful people in society and unsuccessful people. If people cannot see that there is a way to get to where they want to be, they live in a state of despair," Teale said.

Teale, 59, still serves on Camp Courant's board of directors. He said he remembers the outdoor space vividly.

"This was during a time when there were no food programs that I knew of and if there were, my mother wasn't aware of them and my father was real sick. I remember I relied on that food," Teale said.

When he attended Camp Courant in the early 1960s, Teale lived in Hartford's Bellevue Square housing project and said that finding a space to play was a challenge.

"It was mostly asphalt, and those areas that had grass were then covered over by asphalt and painted green," Teale said.

Josh Reese, Camp Courant's executive director, said that the struggles that faced Teale's generation still exist today and are still central to the camp's mission "to provide a free sanctuary for Hartford children that enables them to develop positive relationships, learn and have fun."

"Camp Courant is and was an opportunity to get out of the city and get away," Reese said, mentioning that in recent times the camp has focused on educating campers about healthy choices just as much as it has focused on keeping the kids active.

Broadening Horizons

Hector Rivera grew up in a single-parent household. His mother worked all summer and didn't want to leave him alone with nothing to do for several months, so she sent him to Camp Courant.

"I needed that meaningful activity because it was easy to find trouble if you wanted to in my neighborhood," said Rivera, who went to the camp when he was 10 or 11 in the early 1980s and now is on the board of directors.

Rivera, 45, who also grew up in the North End of Hartford, said that interacting with people outside of his neighborhood was a challenge. Rivera said he went to school with kids from his neighborhood and rarely had the chance to meet people from other places.

"My mom was looking for us to expand our knowledge of the world," Rivera said, explaining that he still has relationships with the people he met at camp.

Most importantl, Rivera said, Camp Courant helped him find a vocation that he felt passionate about. Rivera became interested in working with young adults after positive interactions with the camp staff.

"The whole experience sparked a curiosity. I was so appreciative of the adults who worked there," Rivera said, explaining that he became a camp counselor at the YMCA shortly afterward.

Rivera is the chief operational officer at Our Piece of the Pie, a youth development agency that focuses on getting urban youth employed, educated and on the road to success.

"Camp Courant gave me my first exposure to work with young adults, I saw how I could be at the other end," Rivera said.

Leadership Skills

After joining the camp when she was 7, Natalie Patterson became a junior leader when she was 13 and a camp counselor when she was 16, moving through all the levels of the camp.

Patterson, now 22, remembers being shy and withdrawn at the start of her camp experience, but said that Camp Courant quickly turned her into a leader and that her passion for leadership did not stop with the camp.

"Even throughout college I pursued leadership. I became a certified student leader my freshman year — it is something I am extremely passionate about. The leadership program taught us how to be an effective leader," said Patterson, who recently graduated from the University of Connecticut and works as a manager at the Connecticut Science Center.

The leadership program, alongside the social activities, brought Patterson out of her shell, she said.